Women Who Kill sounds like a bad documentary on Netflix…and in some ways it’s meant to sound that way. But I’ll get to that. To start with, the film is genre non-conforming (pun intended): it’s a thriller, but also a comedy; a satire painted with a rainbow-colored indie brush with horror lurking in the shadows. It is, in short, one of the most subversively hilarious lesbian movies I’ve ever seen, and refreshingly unique in a world of ten “Fast and the Furious” movies.

Morgan (played by Jungermann, who wrote, stars and directed) is an awkward, introverted Lesbian with a capital L. She drives an old Subaru, wears loafers and large sweaters over a collared shirt, and gets nauseous during moments of emotional intimacy. Uncomfortable in her own skin, relationships, particularly commitment, make her even more uncomfortable. She runs a podcast about female murderers out of the apartment she still shares with her bisexual ex, Jean (Ann Carr).

This popular podcast, the eponymous “Women Who Kill” (doesn’t sound quite as catchy as “Serial”), makes them enough money to be a full-time job and leaves them time to do things like visit imprisoned lesbian serial killers and join the local food co-op in their neighborhood (Park Slope, Brooklyn). The co-op is pretentious and fits every stereotype about co-ops, but it is where Morgan meets the young and Gothic Simone (Sheila Vand).

Simone pursues Morgan aggressively and the two start to date, even though they seem to have nothing in common. Things start to derail, however, when one of the women from the co-op is killed and Jean suggests that Simone might actually be a serial killer they previously profiled on their podcast. A spark of physical jeopardy is introduced that turns Morgan and Jean into bonafide, real-life snoops in their own personal lives, but is Simone really a killer, or is she a misunderstood outsider kept at arm’s length by Park Slope’s privileged culture? Morgan never actually asks, which is just another indicator of the emotional disconnect and self-involved nature of Park Slope’s residents.

Women Who Kill is biting in its mockery of “privileged culture” (kale, co-ops, gentrified neighborhoods, and a healthy dose of self-obsession and neurosis), but it also is like a more subtle version of a Kate McKinnon lesbian skit on “SNL.” Jungermann knows lesbian culture and exactly where to scatter a sly inside joke that will leave queer female audiences guffawing. There is a reason the film won the best screenplay award in the US Narrative Competition at the Tribeca Film Festival.

For all that, it’s a fantastic movie and one very well worth seeing for anyone who enjoys dark comedies, but there is a small disconnect and a bigger, glaring problem. The disconnect comes in the form of the attraction between Morgan and and Simone. What does each see in the other? What draws them and keeps them together despite their vast differences in life experiences? Similarly, what was the attraction between Morgan and Jean, both of whom seem equally washed out by life? Neither sparkle with the vivacity that would keep a relationship alive, which is perhaps why theirs petered out.Ingrid Jungermann: That’s exactly it, I hope people see that aspect. The intention, absolutely is to spotlight that. As a young person, growing up in Florida, in a religious setting – only after years of therapy or a lot of work can you undo the damage of the message that “you’re wrong, who you love is wrong and how you love is wrong.” We experience first-love, full of fear and darkness. All those feelings are mixed up with what should be a wonderful experience. We carry around this self-loathing and internalized homophobia. In that way Women Who Kill is a dark, romantic-comedy that’s specifically queer.

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This us the story of Frieda Belinfante (1904-1995), a remarkable woman who was the first female conductor to have her own symphony orchestra in Holland and later in Orange County, United States. Controversial, because of her homosexuality she shows a remarkably strong and positive will in everything she does.

Born in a family of musicians in Amsterdam, she joins the resistance during WW II and flees to Switzerland. After the war she moves to the U.S. where she proceeds with her musical career in the Hollywood studios and forms her own symphony orchestra with only Hollywood musicians. The story of her life is told by herself, her older sister Renee, old students and friends, and illustrated by the places where she lived, archive material of her orchestra and some of her most beautiful music.

Dutch cellist, conductor, and anti-Nazi resistance fighter. Born into a musical family, she began studying the cello at the age of 10. She debuted professionally at age 17, and worked as a director of various ensembles. In 1931 she was briefly married, although she explained to her husband that she was a lesbian. She had relationships with women throughout her life, keeping them private, but caring little about public opinion. In 1937, she was invited to manage the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, making her the first woman in Europe to conduct a professional orchestra. She continued to enjoy success in her career, appearing regularly on Dutch radio and conducting around Europe, but her work was cut short when Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands. Along with her friend, gay artist , she joined the resistance movement early on, creating forged documents for Dutch Jews.

Belinfante, herself, was half Jewish. In 1943, to prevent the Nazis from checking forged documents against public records, she aided her friends in the bombing of the registration office in Amsterdam. The plan successfully destroyed 800,000 identity cards of Jews and non-Jews alike. Sadly, members of the resistance group, including Arondeus, were arrested and executed shortly afterwards. For the next three months, Belinfante disguised herself as a man to evade discovery. She eventually escaped to Switzerland by crossing the alps on foot, only returning to the Netherlands after the war. In 1947, she came to the United States, where she resumed her musical career in California, forming and conducting the Orange County Philharmonic Society to great acclaim. But preferences for a male conductor and rumors about her lesbianism contributed to her dismissal from the orchestra in 1962. Fifteen years later, Orange County would acknowledge her contributions by declaring a ‘Frieda Belinfante Day.’

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What can a lesbian young girl do in Iran ? How can she live, love and make a living without marring? Sahar is 17 years old, her mother dies and she lives with her depressed father and above all, she is in love with her best friend, who happens to be a girl : Nasrin.

If you could be mine by Sara Farizan tells the opposites attract story of Sahar and Nasrin, best fiends since childhood, mainly since they were 6 years old, Sahar even remembers that since she and Nasrin were 6 years old she had wanted to marry her. She has even told her mother that she wants to marry Nasrin, but her mother told her not to think nor speak about that again.

Sahar’s parents loved each other very much, her mother’s family was rich, while her father’s wasn’t and they actually married for love, but her mother’s family disowned her and they lived without a great wealth. Everything went well and they have lived happily in their Teheran apartment, until her mother died and their world fall apart. Her father barely spoke to Sahar and Sahar relied on Nasrin, her best friend. Sahar is a smart, average young woman who wants to be a doctor. She is almost 18 and studies hard to go to the best college in Iran to be a doctor.

Nasrin is a very beautiful young woman, clever, but not really interested in school, yet very much interested in fashion, make up and she is very interested in always looking amazing, yet sometimes even breaking the rules : for example in Iran a woman can be arrested if her elbows are showing (Sahar has to lie to the police that her clothes shirnk in the wash and she hadn’t time to change them). It may seem funny, but it is grotesque on how the women are being treated there.

Nasrin’s family , the Mehndi’s, are rich and their condition is far over Sahar’s, yet Nasrin’s parents don’t love each other, they had an arranged marriage, but her father is a pistacchio merchant and he earns a lot and they can afford many things Sahar’s family cannot. Nasrin’s mother wants her to be married as soon as possible, while her brothers have lazy lived sustained by the family.

Sahar and Nasrin have very deep, beyond friendship feelings and their love is confessed in secret, they even share stolen kisses and hot embraces during their “study hours”, but Nasrin doesn’t wants to discuss how their live together can be.

The turning point is the moment when Nasrin’s engagement to Reza, a young doctor, is announced during a family dinner.

Nasrin didn’t tell Sahar about it and Sahar felt hurt and realized she didn’t want to recognize the roles each of them played in their relationship. As her cousin Ali told her : Sahar is Nasrin’s puppy, following her everywhere, her wishes are commands to her and not getting anything in return. Nasrin was selfish, she wanted to have all the attention to herself. Sahar was the opposite. But, she had no doubt that Nasrin loved her, but what could they do? What could she do to stop the wedding and have Nasrin to herself?

Ali, Sahar’s cousin is a student, theoretically, but practically he is a pimp for : Mother and Daughter and a sort of obscure drug dealer and a gay and transsexual party thrower. He seems to have many aquintaces and one of them will become Sahar’s friend : Parveen. Oh, and Ali is very much gay.

Parveen is a different story, she was a he before the sex change operation. Parveen is a very beautiful woman, feminine and possessing all the skills to be a fashionable one to. She was a man before she knew she is transsexual and did not feel comfortable in her own body, she decided to have the change and she is now a selfconscient woman.

Sahar met Parveen at one of Ali’s parties and he told her Parveen is transsexual and then the thought flourished in Sahar’s head : the only way to stop Nasrin’s wedding was that she , herself, would become a man. That’s why she attended Parveen’s group meetings with other transsexuals and Sahar told them she wanted to become a transsexual in a month. Parveen tried to explain this isn’t physically nor psychologically possible, but Sahar went on and even went to a sex change clinic in Teheran.

The authorities allowed sex change clinics , because the sex change was allowed as the cure to the desease. They were all sick and had to be treated this way.

At the clinic, when she waited for her turn to talk to the surgeon, Sahar meets Reza, Nasrin’s fiannce . Fate made them meet there and complicate the story even more. Of course, Sahar didn’t do the sex change operation and Reza never spoke to Sahar about their meeting there, he hasn’t even told Nasrin. Sahar did. And Sahar also told Nasrin she couldn’t stop her wedding and they stood apart a while. In all this time Sahar had to focus on study and thought a lot about her relationship with Nasrin. Sahar knew their last meeting was about to happen, so she planned it carefully, while she talked to Ali on fleeing the country and go to Turkey.

Sahar and Nasrin’s last meeting before the weeding was very emotional and breathtaking, but Sahar learned that she had to break free. She didn’t fled to Turkey, because of the pleading of her father and she even attended Nasrin’s wedding.

The big surprise was Nasrin’s mother : she knew about Sahar and Nasrin’s love for each other and she told Sahar that she had to find Nasrin a husband in order to stop this. And she made it. She even made the day and the night the worse of Sahar’s life.

Sahar and Nasrin stood apart for the rest of the upcoming period. Sahar is now in college and Nasrin is happily married to Reza. Until one evening when a desperate Reza came to Sahar pleading her to see Nasrin. Of course, it was all about Nasrin again. At first, I thought she missed Sahar and wanted to leave everything behind and run away with her, but instead Nasrin felt bad and she was helpless and in need for a knight in shining armor to rescue her : she was just pregnant and scared. I think that were Sahar’s mere thoughts. When she realized what is going on, Sahar played the best friend part and after leaving Nasrin safe and sound at home with her husband, she realized how free she is and how fortunate to be in college, follow her dream to become a doctor and how lucky she was to have a colleague student that had a crush on her.

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Angela’s story

“When I was growing up my parents fought a lot so I spent a lot of time at my best friend’s house. Her family was very evangelical and I remember her dad coming into the room and telling us it was ‘not right and not normal’ for us to be sleeping so close together. When her mom told us we had to stop spending too much time together it broke my heart. They would tell us that homosexuality is unnatural and sinful and even though I’m not a Christian I feel like their words got engrained inside of me for quite a number of years because I felt a deep sense of shame about myself for being attracted to women. As I got older I had other friends who were straight, or mostly straight, and we often found ourselves sleeping in the same bed. On multiple occasions I was told by them to ‘give them some more space.’ That would always hurt a lot. Looking back, I understand now that I had crushes on all these friends, but at the time I was deeply embarrassed to admit it and fearful of destroying my friendships if I expressed any hint of attraction.

When I turned 22 I started a four year relationship with a man. I thought I was too much of a man-hater and that I needed to give men a chance. Four awkward and turbulent years later, I finally accepted that men and I were simply not going to work together.
The first time I fell in love with a woman, the entire world suddenly made more sense. A sense of beauty and meaning overwhelmed me in our short yet forever life-changing relationship. I finally understood why there were so many love songs in the world, and love poems, and why people felt so strongly about having a partner or a passionate love-fling. I used to think romance was a collective expression of obsession or insanity. Suddenly I understood that it can be so much more than that.

When my relationship came to a close, I decided to create Lesbihonest Podcast to share my own experiences and those of other lesbians. My first episode was called “How to Survive a Lesbian Breakup,” which thankfully I did, and since then I have traveled to France, scotland, ireland, Czech Republic, hungary, Poland and Spain talking to other women about lesbian rights, culture and visibility in their countries.

The queer scene both in the United States and in Europe has been a bit harder to navigate than I would have ever expected. As a mostly feminine-presenting woman, I’ve often been mistaken for straight even by other lesbians, and meeting other feminine-presenting lesbians to date has been a challenge. Yet I know that there are far more pressing challenges faced by the LGBTQ community, which I strive to expose and explore in my podcast.

Angela is a lesbian woman currently residing in California. Her podcast can be found at thelesbihonestproject.com.”

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“When did you last see your mother? Someone asked me. Someone who was walking with me in the city. I didn’t want to tell her; I thought in this city, a past was precisely that. Past. Why do I have to remember? In the old world, anyone could be a new creation, the past was washed away. Why should the new world be so inquisitive?

Don’t you ever think of going back?

Silly question. There are threads that help you find your way back, and there are threads that intend to bring you back. Mind turns to the pull, it’s hard to pull away. I’m always thinking of going back. When Lot’s wife looked over her shoulder, she turned into a pillar of salt. Pillars hold things up, and salt keeps things clean, but it’s a poor exchange for losing yourself. People do go back, but they don’t survive, because two realities are claiming them in the same time. Such things are too much. You can salt your heart, or kill your heart, or you can choose between the two realities. There is much pain here. Some people think you can have the cake and eat it. The cake goes mouldy and they choke on what’s left. Going back after a long time will make you mad, because the people you left behind do not like to think of you changed, will treat you as they always did, accuse you of being indifferent, when you are only different.”

“Oranges are not the only fruit” by Jeanette Winterson is a lesbian classic book. After it was released it was set next to cooking books in the libraries’ bookshelves. It would be funny if it wouldn’t be tragic.

Jeanette Winterson tells her own life story and the book is a memoir, rather close to a confession. There are many themes and motifs enveloped in her confession especially from her childhood : Jeanette has spent a lot of time in an industrial town in England in her adoptive parents’ house. Her mother is the main character in little Jeanette’s life and instead of a playful childhood, Jeanette is dragged in an over-religious world her mother created : her mother brought her up as one of God’s elects and raised Jeanette as being destined to be God’s missionary. In her zealously, Jeanette’s mother offers her only oranges as the only fruit, a symbol of that Jeanette should always do as she is told, by herself in a religious excess and human obsession – the oranges represent heterosexuality.

Jeanette doesn’t even go to school until the authorities oblige her adoptive mother to and school is also a bad experience for a religiously inoculated Jeanette, who ends being marginalized and laughed at by her colleagues. Her mother is not interested in anything but religion, religious societies and missionary priests. To please her mother, Jeanette takes her role seriously and helps in converting other people to, but the turning point is when she falls in love with one of the converts, Melanie and although she can’t tell what it means, she understands her mother will hate her for it, but her secret is discovered by her mother and starting now, Jeanette’s image is changed in her mother’s eyes and starts becoming an outcast at home.

There are many characters in the book that sustain the two main characters : overzealous women from the church, the two ladies from the newspaper shop that love unholy, Elsie, Janette’s old friend, Melanie and the pastors. The book has chapters as the Bible has in the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, obviously the Bible holds a great deal in Jeanette’s life, especially in her childhood, but she doesn’t only obey it, but also she questions it, disagrees with her mother and the pastors, starting with the moment when she is accused as being unholy when she falls for a woman and her mother realizes she cannot be the missionary she was raised for to be.

Her mother wants Jeanette to go away from home, she doesn’t want her here to ruin the plans she has left for the church or the missionary societies she fights for. She doesn’t care about Jeanette’s feelings, Jeanette’s dreams or desires as a young woman to evolve and do something with her life searching her talents. Because she ruined her mother’s dream who raised her to become a missionary, her mother’s unfulfilled dream herself, she threw Jeanette away. That proves she only used Jeanette for her selfish misfortune.

Jeanette leaves home at 16 years old and works hard to sustain herself. It doesn’t matter, because she was out of a toxic environment that treated her as an outcast anyway. She works hard because she knows this is the only way she can follow her heart, her dreams and to end up in the big city. She won’t end up with Melanie nor other converts, but she will find love in the big city.

I loved how the author sees her story within a fantastic story of Winnet, a sorcerer’s apprentice, who will have to choose between the castle and the village, who will choose the village instead of her heart to become of stone. Living in the village, working hard she hears of the big city and all the possibilities it holds for her dream and will face many obstacles to end up there and become free and live the way she wants. The story is a metaphor for Jeanette’s real life story.

I loved the way the story was told, I enjoyed the characters and the main theme: to sacrifice her comfort, her past, her childhood home and her mother’s love to pursue her heart and her dreams.

“I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death, and be on my side for ever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me. There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other’s names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name.”

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The subject of the movie it’s not one that I expected : a mixed feelings and thoughtful characters drama about a woman returning home to the Orthodox Jewish community of north London – I love the mystery around Ronit leaving London for New York, the strengths and weaknesses of Ronit and Estie’s friendship and Dovid and Ronit’s evolving characters, as now, Estie is Dovid’s wife.

I can’t wait to watch this beautiful movie!!!

The title suggests rebellion, fear, love lost and growing as an adult :

“the question of whose disobedience, and what kind of disobedience it is, are at the heart of this absorbing and moving love story from Chilean director Sebastián Lelio, his English language debut, following very quickly on the heels of his film A Fantastic Woman which has been a festival-circuit hit this year.

Rachel Weisz, Rachel McAdams and Alessandro Nivola are at the top of their game, perhaps especially Nivola in a supporting role; he achieves a sympathy and maturity that I have never seen from him before.

The drama takes place in the Orthodox Jewish community of north London. Weisz is Ronit, a young woman we see initially in New York: a photographer evidently living a fashionable and bohemian lifestyle. Out of the blue, she receives some bad news from back home, and her first impulse is to try to anesthetize the pain with drink and casual sex. But the truth must be faced up to, and a much-feared homecoming is necessary. Because she has learned of the death of her father, a much-respected rabbi: a fierce, potent cameo for Anton Lesser.

It was partly to escape the stifling rigidity of her father’s values that Ronit fled London for a secular life in New York in the first place: defiant, relishing freedom, but nursing a wound of guilt for breaking her father’s heart; she was an only child and he a widower. Ronit was all he had left.

Back in London for the various ceremonies – the very epitome of the religious observance and obedience that she had wanted to get away from – Ronit feels all eyes on her: curious, and disapproving, but in a way cowed by her authentic connection with this revered religious leader. People have a habit of remarking, in tones of awe, how much she resembles her late mother. Weisz conveys her grief, her disorientation, her borderline-hysterical need to mock the pities.

Ronit is disturbed most by two friends from the old days, from whom she senses a nervous disapproval. One his Dovid (Alessandro Nivola), her father’s favourite pupil, a virtual adopted son who is now a much admired young rabbi himself. The other is Esti, beautifully played by Rachel McAdams, who was Ronit’s only ally in youthful rebelliousness back in the day. But now, Esti is married to Dovid and Ronit is clearly shocked by how much older they seem, how much more conservative, how greater the gulf is between them, and by that token how much more intense her loneliness and grief then feels.

But Lelio’s drama is not simply about this, because it is clear that Esti is not in fact so estranged from Ronit as first appeared, and this homecoming triggers a new independence of mind in her that makes everyone very uneasy. The truth is that Ronit and Esti were more than friends – and it wasn’t just religion she was fleeing but forbidden love. They could easily be more than friends again and the movie adroitly lets us decide just how open a secret their relationship always was.

There an overwhelming passion and eroticism to this reunion, especially in contrast to the dutiful marital lovemaking between Dovid and Esti which Lelio had already shown us: trying of course for a baby. In the bedroom, before sex, Esti had listlessly removed not just her clothes but her wig: the badge of female piety. One of Ronit’s most misjudged attempts at diplomacy is to try wearing a wig herself, a temporary gesture which succeeds only in irritating everyone and reminding her late father’s friends how much they still resent her desertion.

The poignancy of her dad’s modest family home and his death bed, moved downstairs to the front room in his final days, reinforces the severity and austerity of Ronit’s family background – and also how sensationally transgressive her renewed affair with Esti is. McAdams herself is excellent at suggesting how with sheer force of will and learned piety she had got her life together while Ronit was away and is now a schoolteacher. We see her leading a class in discussing Shakespeare’s Othello. The choice of play interestingly leads the audience to wonder how Dovid is going to take the news of his wife’s adventure.

Dovid himself is a wiry, muscular warrior of the faith. But he is not a tyrant or a bully and he is himself conflicted in various ways about Ronit’s reappearance. Rather daringly, he is teaching the Song Of Songs in his own scriptural class and permitting candid discussion of its erotic qualities.

The drama is expertly controlled by Lelio, lit and shot in muted and subdued colour tones by cinematographer Danny Cohen and it has a very interesting musical score by Matthew Herbert; its musing and almost playful woodwind figures cut against the expected sombreness and obvious melancholy to contribute to this sense of disorientation and subversion. This is richly satisfying and powerfully acted work.

Disobedience is screening at the Toronto film festival and will be released in the UK on 4 May with a US date yet to be announced. “

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Jenny’s Story

“In the early 1980’s a beautiful charismatic Somali girl met a hard working British/South African man traveling and working around East and Southern Africa.By 1994 I had arrived into the world.Due to my father’s work commitments, they had chosen to raise myself and my sibling in Malawi. The city of Lilongwe is filled with vibrant people and culture, my childhood was filled with nothing but wonderful adventures because of this.I pretty much knew from the get go that I was somewhat different. The word ‘gay’ to me was completely unknown, totally alien. My first experience of this word came from hearing various stories about how disgusting and criminal gays were to society. At the time, homosexual acts were illegal.Witnessing a man taunted and beaten in the street validated the fact that in no way would I ever express my sexuality in this country, the thought was completely terrifying.-When my parents decided that that we would be making the permanent move to England, my life completely changed.As beautiful as Malawi is, I knew how toxic it was to those in the lgbtqi+ community, and how much slower progression would be there.Eventually (after years of staying closeted at school) I came out at the age of 19. Although met with a lot of questioning from my father and disownment from extended family, I was completely and utterly happy.I spent a lot of that year dealing with depression and the the anxiety that consumed my mind. I eventually went travelling,and for the first time, I was proud to be a gay woman of color.As cheesy and cliché as what I’m about to say is- I think it’s important for anyone and everyone in the lgbtqi+ community to just keep going. Please don’t give up. Be absolutely proud of the human you are and learn to love every sense of your being.Realizing who I am and accepting this was the biggest achievement in my life so far. Being able to fall in complete and utter mutual compatible weirdness with a woman and walk through the streets of Brighton holding her hand is simply beautiful. I often think about those that do not have this privilege.”

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The interwar lovestory between Celia and Aurora (#Aurelia) from the Spanish series Six Sisters (Seis Hermanas) is a painting within a painting.

This is the love story between two women from different social classes during the 1913-1916 Spain, when the women had no right to vote, they just have to marry and bear children and take care of their husbands. Celia (played by Candela Serrat) is one of the six daughters of the Silva family, a very respected family in Madrid during those times, who happens to love women and she falls in love with her best friend Petra, but Petra is straight and instead of helping Celia she tells everybody, including Celia’s sisters, that Celia is sick and needs psychiatric treatment.

Celia has to go through a terrible treatment to be “healed” of unproper feelings towards women. At the psychiatrist’s she meets a very friendly nurse, Aurora Alarcon, who helps her through the treatment and even gives her the solution to get out of it: a presumed boyfriend who can tell the doctor that Celia is cured and their relationship is real.

With Aurora’s help, Celia escapes the horrid mistreatment of electric shocks and gets real close to Aurora (played by Luz Valdenebro) who will show her what love can really be and how wonderful it is to be in love and be loved. Aurora confesses she has been through the same treatment because she also loves women and she chose her career of being a nurse to help all the women like her.

She will also introduce Celia in the suffragist movement that fought for women’s rights to vote and to have the right to inheritance of their own, because for now they will have the right for their father’s inheritance only after they marry and the fortune will go to their husband.

The main painting represents the story of the Silva sisters set in the interwar period in Madrid 1913-1916 :

Adela (Celia Freijeiro), the older sister, the fundamental pillar of the Silva sisters, is one of the most elegant and admired women of the high society of the moment; takes most decisions, is correct, generous, loving and kind; Very young widow, believes that love will never touch her door again; Blanca (Mariona Tena), is beautiful, classy, kind, elegant and educated, engaged to the rich banker Rodolfo Loygorri (Fernando Andina), minister of foreign affairs, but in love with her brother-in-law, doctor Cristóbal Loygorri; Diana (Marta Larralde), of strong character, replaces her father at the head of the factory of the Silva family, is the entrepreneurial sister, believes that she underestimates the woman and, although she does not count on finding the love of her life, her Destiny has different plans for her; Francisca (María Castro), sings in secret in the Ambigú but her dream is to sing for a more select audience; Celia (Candela Serrat), loves letters, studied teaching and her dream is to continue studying, writing and knowing the world. Later she discovers that she feels a feeling of love towards her worker friend Petra; and Elisa (Carla Díaz), is the small sister, spoiled, irascible and immature, dreams of finding a man of good position with whom he can start a family.

The six sisters go from being high class women without any concern to direct the textile factory and business of his father, Mr. Fernando Silva, after the sudden death of this, in a society in which women have neither right to vote, dependent on their uncle, because they were denied the right of inheritance or holding the right on any property.

Celia Silva is a school teacher with the dream that one day she will be a writer with the same right as men to vote and to be free, and to love Aurora freely. Their love is real, passionate, based on two intelligent and highly educated women of those times. Aurora works at private practices or at hospitals and earns her own wage, yet far smaller than a man would do.

For now, Celia is a school teacher and Aurora is a nurse, their love is hidden, but real, yet Aurora has much more experience and realizes that Celia can still have certain feelings for her first love, Petra and somehow their hidden love, fulfilled by desire, has an abrupt stop now, when Aurora needs to go back home at a small town near Madrid called Caceres and marry a man to help her family. Celia is devastated yet she continues to fight for women’s rights and poor children’s rights to learn the same things as the rich ones. Somehow she backsides Aurora and now she finds herself abandoned by her one and truly love.

After hard times she had to live back home at Caceres to live with a husband she doesn’t love, her mind being set back to Celia, Aurora leaves her husband and returns to Madrid into Celia’s arms, her one and truly love. Yet, Aurora bears her husband’s child and her escape won’t go unnoticed, and her husband persuades her wherever she will go.

Aurora and Celia leave Madrid for a small town near Madrid (Araganzuela) where Celia teaches at school and Aurora keeps searching for work at local private practices. This is the best period for the two women, although they have a hard life and hard times, living in a small one bedroom home and being persuaded by many bad intended people : Celia’s brother in law, Celia’s Marina…. And Aurora’s husband. Aurora is being accused by a patient’s husband that she deliberately killed her, while the patient died of an undiagnosed diabethes. Aurora gets hit in the head by someone unknown and after some time her bay will be stillborn. There are many tragedies, so many that it is hard to even imagine to have lived like that and get through so many tragedies. I remember the moment, when Aurora’s husband Clemente finds out about Celia and Aurora’s lesbian relationship and when he threatens them with a gun and takes Aurora away.

Celia writes articles in the local newspaper, but then someone else seems to write them for her and trashes her name Silva into mud for disgracing men or the story of their neighbors, which end to be read by Aurora’s brother and husband, and they end up finding them and they need to fled again.

I loved the moment when Aurora proposes Celia to be her wife and they end up going to war.

Unfortunately, the love story between Celia and Aurora has a bad ending, because Aurora will die of cholera and leaves an disconsolate Celia alone and unloved with a huge hole in her heart.

During the next episodes Celia will find another woman to love, Cata, but it will never compare to Aurora’s love, everything else pales in comparison. Why was their story cut this way???

The abrupt end of Celia and Aurora’s love story have brought many questions in the fans community : why their love was such a tragedy all over ? why did Aurora had to die that way? Why couldn’t it there be a happy end of a lesbian love in Spanish TV?

The tragic end of Celia and Aurora’s love story : Aurora dies of cholera during the war looks so much like the death of Cristina from the love story between Cristina and Isabel from Tierra de lobos.

Why can’t we see in Spanish TV an not alone Spanish Tv, but TV in general, lesbian stories with happy endings!!!!!???

The interwar lesbian lovestory of Aurora and Celia has substance and essence. but it lacks continuity and realism. Tragedy and concessions from their parts can be understood, they have to give up so much and so many in the name of their love and suffer so much more for their love and in the end …there is only death and remembrance. It’s unfair.

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Alice (Kristianna Loken) is a ghostwriter for a famous author and she faces the writer’s block after a terrible accident she has suffered and became amnesiac (On waking up she had lost part of her memory and has no recollection of the accident and her stay in Malta). She is halfway through the work of his new book, but cannot write anymore.

A year has passed since she had a terrible accident in Malta where she was staying with her husband Max (Antonio Cupo) in his family villa and was in a coma for two weeks. Since then, she has been suffering from depression and has recurrent and cryptic nightmares. Max, who also is her agent, persuades her to go back to Malta in the hopes that something will unblock her mind so she can start working again and meet her deadline.

Here she meets the beautiful stranger Mediterranean girl, Sara (Sarai Givaty) Max has hired to help around the house, that will seduce her in every way that she can, but certainly holds a secret, we all have secrets. The amazing love affair seems to help Alice’s writer block and also make her fall in love with Sara.

There is going to be a murder. Who is murderer? Will Alice overcome the writer’s block? Will her love affair with Sara last or was it just a fling?